What got you into shite?

[Spiny Norman]

Not really sure I can answer that.

I think most of it on my part is that I don't like feeling I'm wasting my money, which is what happens when you spend ££thousands on a new car and watch it lose a couple of grand a year in depreciation.

That couple of grand will buy me an interesting old car, insure it, pay for a couple of running repairs and the insurance.

 

I've had new and nearly new cars, some for business that could be written off against tax and some paid for out my hard earned, but they've been little shopping trolleys like Clios and Puntos.

Decent enough wee cars in their way, but when you can run a Saab turbo AND a Merc for less than the year's depreciation on a Punto it's a no-brainer as far as I'm concerned.

[warren t claim]

I have a short attention span with cars therefore signing up to a three year finance deal on a new car would be utter stupidity as I'd be bored with it within six months.

[r.welfare]

I used to have a short attention span and change every 6 months or 10,000 miles, but life gets in the way now. I've had my Accord now for nearly three years, which is some kind of longevity record for me. At some point it will probably explode or self-destruct, then I'll replace it. But for the moment it just trundles on, so I'll stick with it.

 

I've had a couple of new-ish cars but would much rather plough money into paying my mortgage down. I believe it was the esteemed Warren T Claim who said that we've never had it so good, it's amazing what you can buy these days for a grand or less. I think the high point for me was five years ago, changing job and handing back the keys of my company Saab before jumping into it's replacement, a '93 Pug 405 TD that had set me back £101 (£50 for the car and £51 for the MOT it had just passed)...

[Bobthebeard]

Hmm, multi-answer methinks:

 

Kind of guided towards it by lack of funds, find 'em much more interesting/satisfying and much easier to work on. I just like 'em. Simples.

 

Ken

 

Same here really. Lack of funds started the processs really. There was a time in the late 90's when money was more abundant and we ( well, not actually me, but Mrs Bob) had a few new lease cars over time, but I became bored with them. Great for impressing the neighbours etc but that has never been my thing. I couldn't tinker with new cars, didnt need to, and if anything went wrong they got whisked away and another appeared whilst it was being fixed. I rebelled by buying old tat to tinker with and smoke around in. This took me back to my proper skint days of the early 80's and have never looked back tbh.

As the man said, I just like em!

Plus poverty returned in 2006 and looks like its staying!

[Angrydicky]

My dad always had knackered old shite when I was a child (I came home from the hospital when I was born in a gold B reg Maestro 1.3 L) and I grew up with it. BX, Ambassador, Montego, 626, Acclaim, MK1 Rover 800...

 

I'm also extremely tight and like the tax exemption and cheap classic insurance of my cars, plus the ability to fix them myself when they go wrong, thus avoiding expensive garage bills. I have a hatred of buying things on finance as well, I've seen people get into debt buying things they don't need and can't afford and then complain that they're "skint". I might have a shit minimum wage job but I'm very careful with money, I don't have a credit card either.

 

Also I think the vast majority of modern cars are hideous bloated overrated monstrosities.

[AnthonyG]

Working in a rural scrapyard in Herefordshire in the early 1990s, punting all sorts of old crap around, including Jap stuff which be worth mega coin now, Colt Celestes, those Datsun 100A Coupe/Estate things, Sunny 120Ys, early 80s Corolla coupes, even a 72 Mazda 1800...

 

I'd always been into 1950/60s cars and conversely whatever was new since I was about 10, but working at the scrapyard, where we sold about a quarter of the vehicles that come in back out to penniless rural folk to get to work in, just seemed wonderful that you could buy a old Maxi for £40 and get three months motoring freedom out of it, so much better than the bus. (I really hated rural buses, nearly always shagged out Leyland Nationals)

 

So many ones that I remember being offered for naff all money, a X plate Audi 80 sport and a Roman Bronze three litre Capri II come to mind. Really wish I had bought the yellow N or P plate 75 Cortina Mk3 2000 GT (think that was what it was badged as).

 

Also Kingsland car auctions at around the same time, some epically shagged-out motors and real characters doing the bidding. Even the auctioneer sounded like he was from a Donegal cattle market. Frequently the best vehicles of the night would be the 3 year old ex-West Mercia Police Astras with 100k on the clock... I'll never forget a woman getting excited about a Metro because it was 'a C reg' even though it had no rear arches to speak of!

[oman5]

My dad. growing up in the '70s, I can remember some world class shite he used to own. F plate mk1 escort estate on which you'd have to use a jug to empty the footwells after parking it overnight in the rain, a '59 PA cresta on which you could hear bits of rust falling off underneath when you slammed the door, a 1970 avenger in poo brown with a yellow roof (1250cc, my dad blew it up after 6 months) A morris 1800 with a block of wood holding the headlight in due to inner wing rot, 1973 FE VX490- only 3 years old when he bought it for a lot of money. it was rotted out within 3 years so he never bought anything expensive again.

[davidfowler2000]

What got me into shite?

 

cms206

 

That is all.

[RoadworkUK]

I haven't got any money.

[dollywobbler]

Not poverty for me. When I got into shite, it was just because I'd decided it was better to own a fleet of shitty cars, rather than blow a daft amount of cash and finance on one newer one. A sensible person would save up and buy one good car, but I never managed that because every time I got a few hundred quid together, I realised I could buy another lump of autoshite. So I did. I think it was my 1982 Austin miniMetro 1.3HLS that started the shite-train off properly for me. That was quickly followed by a 'free' Vanden Plas 1500 Allegro in gorgeous Russet Brown (free apart from having to fetch it and get bits fixed). I sold that car to one M Bollox, though this was still the days before I discovered this forum.

 

Haven't really looked back since then.

 

What I really love about shite motoring is that you don't expose yourself to massive debt. Buy a shite car for a few hundred quid, throw a few hundred quid at it a year in maintenance and replace when bored.

[RoadworkUK]

Yeah, poverty started it, for me, but it's not the whole story.

 

Nicola and I are paying £530 a month into a mortgage on a £150k house. That means we're paying £265 each. Aside from the interest, all of that goes into the actual bricks and mortar meaning that, some day, they'll be ours. In 24 years time, when it's all paid off, it's comparitively unlikely that the house will be worth any less than we paid for it.

 

Cars though; and the idea of having any worthwhile actual money tied up in them, doesn't appeal one tiny weeny bit. If we wanted to, we could drop £250 a month to be strapped up something with a new registration, but at the last count we have onehundredandseventytrillion better things we can think of to do with our money.

 

Aside from that, being that I drive new stuff of every description very regularly, I cant think of much that doesn't say Quattroporte on it that I'd really want to sign on the dotted line for.

 

and all new cars are rubbish etc. etc. etc.

[Lord Sterling]

...My dear departed dad used to work for a firm called Kalamazoo in Brum...

 

Kin 'ell, I live right near there and have been for an interview at that place a few times. The building still does look like a 60's office block. Never got a job there though, they obviously dont want someone who thinks he still lives in the 80s working there guess.

 

Yeah, well further to my post, as with most here poverty and not trusting banks/finance deals and buying on the never never has played a rather huge part in my refusal to 'get with the times'.

[Joseph]

Mainly growing up around old motors, and not finding an attraction in Ferraris etc from a young age.

 

But what got me into shite? Well I love old cars, I love new cars (to an extent), I love trucks and buses. Anything with wheels and an engine, really.

 

I've always been into such motors - and as a result was amazed when I discovered this forum to whet my appetite!

[brickwall]

Furthering my post.

 

Dealer charges are ridiculous and I hate being made a fool of. After cars get to a certain age the parts become available for many places and are often better than the manufacturers fitted part. When Land Rover try to sting you for £390 for an alternator you want to go postal. I love it when someone tells you they just had to spend £800 at the garage to keep their car pootering about and I know it would have been done for a hunert if I owned the car.

 

Keeps me sane.

[Pete-M]

Being skint. I'd much rather be driving a new XJR than an 18 year old one, but there's the small matter of £85k or thereabouts to upgrade which I really can't justify. Oh, and mine is better looking. I'd wanted an XJR since '94.

 

I like new cars and drive nearly new ones most days of the week. They're good. They don't rattle, everything works, and I've never owned a car that'll average 57 mpg. I'm not gonna spend £20k buying something that'll be worth £5k in three years though. I'm much happier buying things when they've had all the money thrown at them already, or when they're at the lowest point of the depreciation curve. Buy 'em when they're worthless "pub landlord" motors, that's my motto.

[Skizzer]

I only buy shitty old cars for real so Milford Hatred doesn't call me a pussy and shit through my letterbox every time I come on here

[dollywobbler]

Here's a thought. Are we generally happier with our cars because we KNOW they're shite? Therefore we allow them the odd gremlin/problem and don't get too wound up when things go wrong. Whereas, if you've spent a fortune on some modern thing and it develops the slightest fault, you'll be feeling pretty miffed.

 

Similarly, if you clock up 10,000 trouble free miles in your relatively new car, you'll just accept that as what it should do. Clock up 10,000 miles in an old shit-heap and it's a real achievement worthy of celebration (or perhaps giving it a wash).

 

There's also the fact that we can grab a few spanners and overcome most of the faults that our cars develop, which (and it might not always feel this way I admit) gives us a chance to joyously bond with our old heaps as we fettle them back to health.

[RoadworkUK]

Here's a thought. Are we generally happier with our cars because we KNOW they're shite? Therefore we allow them the odd gremlin/problem and don't get too wound up when things go wrong. Whereas, if you've spent a fortune on some modern thing and it develops the slightest fault, you'll be feeling pretty miffed...

 

That's certainly true of me. At work we're forever fixing electric folding mirrors under warranty because "they squeak". I had thought of shrugging my shoulders at the customer and saying "so what?" but they demand perfection for their £369 per month. Similarly, we have a bloke who's forever whinging about a squeak from the clutch pedal in his E-Class coupe. Yes, there's a tiny weeny squeak. Turn your music up or something for gawdsakes.

 

Should have bought an automatic like every other E-Class in existence.

[Pete-M]

You can fix electric folding mirrors? The ones on my Subaru only work in winter...... passengers one is fine all year round, drivers just does a little epileptic twitch in the summer, but works fine in winter....

[RoadworkUK]

You can fix electric folding mirrors? The ones on my Subaru only work in winter...... passengers one is fine all year round, drivers just does a little epileptic twitch in the summer, but works fine in winter....

 

We can de-squeakify them by putting a voltage stall relay in (the squeak is the noise of the motor trying to run on at the end of its movement). Alas, when they're borked, they're borked. New frame time. £loads.

 

I'd just call it "character" if I was you.

[Justin Case]

I'm really a shiter at heart, even though I run a relatively new car. For me it is just that older cars have more character and are more fun to drive; you feel that there is some connection between you and the car, rather than sitting at the wheel of something that is as about exciting to operate as a washing machine Funny thing though is that I thought exactly the same about todays shite when it was new Is it me or have cars just been getting worse and worse over the last 25 years?

 

But even driving futureshite there is the satisfaction of beating the system and annoying the car snobs. My car is coming up to six years old , but it can still cruise effortlessly on motorways at 80(ish)mph and has all the mod cons, climate control, ABS, lots of airbags, etc that a brand new car would have but it's only worth about 20% of the new one and depreciation is tailing off (now about the equivalent of two shite cars a year ) . I don't worry about getting a new car every three years becuse the number plate looks old, I just keep running the current one until it wears out.

[barefoot]

Slightly different here - in the year of our Lord, Nineteen Hundred & Ninety Four, I replaced my 6 year old, E registered 1300 Mk2 Cavalier with a 7 year old D registered Porsche 944.

Going backwards like that was very, very difficult since I'd always been brought up to buy 3 year old cars and replace them after 3 years with another 3 year old car.

That was how Father barefoot did things.

So buying an 'old' car was an absolute anathema to me, however...

When I'd had it for about a year, I put on a personalised / ageless number plate & the car (to me, And I know that it's completely twatty) stopped ageing.

I still have it.

Then I bought in '96, a '79 bay window van which I also still have - but that one, I am PROUD of it's '79 V plate.

I bought an E plate '87 Scirocco on here a couple of years ago & I'm PROUD of that old plate too.

Stuff has ceased to age in my eyes - it's totally bizarre.

[sierraman]

I think, as people have mentioned, 'financial augmentation' and a benign lack of interest in following convention have been key factors. When I really knew i was cut out for this for the long run was at about 18 when the bird I was going out with at the time refused to get in the Sierra I had because it smelt of oil and damp, it was the sierra or her. I could easily have seen myself pissing away hundreds away every month trying to keep up with everyone else in a 54 reg Corsa (in obilgatory black of course) but I took the decision to stick with shite. I can say with pride on those cold winter mornings in January im messing about changing the perennially leaking oil, not wasting my day wandering aimlessly around some foul provincial shopping centre.

[pandarus]

It's the hunt for the ultimate shite...24 years and thirty odd cars later, I'm still looking...

[mk2_craig]

What got me into shite was the theft and burning out of a van that I had sunk five grand into buying and doing up, then the theft of the two grand car I replaced it with, two days after I got the keys to it. I was 21 at the time and pledged never to own anything faintly valuable again.

 

With firstborn on the way this summer that era is now coming to an end and I have just sold my fantastic Sierra to make way for a boring diesel Astra. That cost me four bags, which is the most I've ever paid for a car in 18 years of vehicle ownership. And there's still a tatty XR2 on the premises for as long as I can resist the wife's efforts to get me to dispose of it

[willswitchengage]

The driver's door?

[Partridge]

I could easily have seen myself pissing away hundreds away every month trying to keep up with everyone else in a 54 reg Corsa (in obilgatory black of course) but I took the decision to stick with shite. I can say with pride on those cold winter mornings in January im messing about changing the perennially leaking oil, not wasting my day wandering aimlessly around some foul provincial shopping centre.

 

That’s how I feel now really, summed up in a few sentences.